Fri, Feb 17 2017, 4:17 PM
For all the sturm and drang seen in the middle of the week, trading levels somehow managed to hit today's 3pm close almost perfectly in line with Mo...
Thu, Feb 16 2017, 8:31 AM
Today begins with another glut of economic data at 8:30am, although it's fairly tame compared to yesterday's CPI/Retail Sales duo. Housing Starts are...
Thu, Feb 16 2017, 5:38 PM
As far as bond market rallies go, today's was one of the most mysterious in recent memory. Several conclusions will have to be jumped to in order to ...
Wed, Feb 15 2017, 8:33 AM
Fed Chair Yellen takes the hot-seat at Congress for a 2nd day today, but this time in front of the always-cheerful and relentlessly intelligent folks ...
Wed, Feb 15 2017, 5:19 PM
When it comes to the most simplistic charts of bond market trends, there are two "bad things" that rates could do in the current context. One of the...
Tue, Feb 14 2017, 8:29 AM
A series of "higher lows" and "lower highs" is the defining characteristic of a consolidation pattern . The following chart highlights the current c...
Tue, Feb 14 2017, 5:22 PM
Bond markets (and markets in general) periodically experience an interesting phenomenon whereby traders are determined to make one of two bets followi...
Mon, Feb 13 2017, 8:56 AM
The week ahead sees data and relevant events come out in concentrated gluts, almost exclusively in the middle of the week. Everyone's favorite headli...
Mon, Feb 13 2017, 5:23 PM
With essentially nothing on the calendar today, and quite a lot on the calendar over the next 2 days, it's not too surprising to see bonds continue th...
Fri, Feb 10 2017, 8:45 AM
This mostly data-free week ends today with one of the only potential market movers ranking as "2nd tier" or better. But Consumer Sentiment at 10am i...
Fri, Feb 10 2017, 4:56 PM
It was an exceptionally slow day for bond markets with the exception of some tension, at times, during the morning hours. Treasuries and MBS both beg...
Thu, Feb 9 2017, 8:39 AM
To everything, there is a season.
The sun also rises.
Nothing lasts forever.
Regardless of the words used to describe the phenomenon, there i...
Thu, Feb 9 2017, 5:57 PM
This morning's commentary invoked some figurative language evokes notions of seasonality (have you ever seen invoke and evoke used in the same sentenc...
Wed, Feb 8 2017, 8:58 AM
As the socioeconomic fates of the world's biggest countries travel down the road of life, sometimes it's smooth sailing and sometimes there's a 17 ca...
Wed, Feb 8 2017, 5:37 PM
Bonds made it 3 days in a row today--rallying to the best levels since mid-January. In fact, apart from Jan 17th, today's closing yields were the l...
Tue, Feb 7 2017, 8:50 AM
Bonds Are Officially in a Positive Short-Term Trend. This was also the case heading into mid January, but steady selling following Yellen's speech (J...
Tue, Feb 7 2017, 5:41 PM
Salient, easily-identifiable motivations for bond market movements continue to be elusive. The times of the day where liquidity (numbers of buyer...
Mon, Feb 6 2017, 8:28 AM
There is almost no significant economic data on tap for this week. Friday is really the only contender with Import/Export Prices and Consumer Senti...
Mon, Feb 6 2017, 5:36 PM
Today was the sort of day you could ask 10 market pundits about and get 10 different answers as to the source of inspiration. From a prevalence sta...
Fri, Feb 3 2017, 8:27 AM
Given that this week's ADP employment numbers and the employment component of the ISM Manufacturing numbers both came in much stronger than expected, ...
Fri, Feb 3 2017, 6:17 PM
Nonfarm payrolls came in at 227k vs a median forecast of 175k. This fact, in and of itself, would almost always be grounds for bond market weakness, ...
Thu, Feb 2 2017, 8:28 AM
Occasionally, these Thursday's before NFP have very little by way of relevant economic data. Today is arguably such a Thursday. With us as always is...
Thu, Feb 2 2017, 4:42 PM
Today ended up being exceptionally quiet for bond markets in the bigger picture, although that wasn't clearly going to be the case earlier this morn...
Wed, Feb 1 2017, 8:20 AM
The significance of the economic data ramps up today with ADP employment at 8:15am. This just came out at 246k vs a median forecast called for a slig...
Wed, Feb 1 2017, 5:25 PM
Between this morning's economic reports and opening tradeflows, there was quite a bit more volume early in the day. This was almost exclusively in ...
Wed, Feb 1 2017, 2:07 PM
(Additions underlined, deletions struck through)
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in December suggests indicates ...
Tue, Jan 31 2017, 8:39 AM
Yesterday was a bit of a puzzler for bond markets. Volumes were decent, but movement was contained in a very narrow range (seen in the chart below). ...
Tue, Jan 31 2017, 5:01 PM
Bonds have rallied moderately since last Thursday. Incidentally, that's also when stocks topped out after their run to all-time highs (for most indic...
Mon, Jan 30 2017, 9:04 AM
Another week in early 2017, another chance for bond markets to defend the rate ceiling set in late 2016(around 2.64% in 10yr yields) or strive for the...
Mon, Jan 30 2017, 5:26 PM
It was an uneventful day for bond markets from most points of view. After opening slightly stronger in Asia, Treasuries sold-off modestly during th...
Fri, Jan 27 2017, 8:25 AM
So far this week, economic data has played a subdued, almost meaningless role in motivating bond market movement. Instead, we've seen big picture t...
Fri, Jan 27 2017, 4:37 PM
It was a fairly one-dimensional day for bond markets, and indeed, markets in general. Despite moderate strength in European bond markets overnight, U...
Thu, Jan 26 2017, 8:36 AM
The winter holiday season can be defined a few different ways. Most broadly, it refers to Thanksgiving through President's day. That's a bit too br...
Thu, Jan 26 2017, 4:28 PM
It may not be the last time we can say this, but bonds hit their weakest levels of 2017 today--first in the overnight session as European bond markets...
Wed, Jan 25 2017, 8:40 AM
The first few weeks of the new year were good for bond markets, but that dream is increasingly being shattered by the past 2 weeks. We were already r...
Wed, Jan 25 2017, 5:38 PM
There were no major headlines this morning and no big economic reports behind bonds' big selling spree. Some news stories suggested overnight bond we...
Tue, Jan 24 2017, 9:10 AM
Today's only significant economic data hits at 10am ET with Existing Home Sales (5.52 mln forecast vs 5.61 mln previously). Given the bigger decline ...
Tue, Jan 24 2017, 5:17 PM
Bond markets began the day in weaker territory following overnight weakness in European bond markets. In addition, bond buyers generally got their ...
Mon, Jan 23 2017, 8:52 AM
Beginning on the business week before an FOMC Announcement, Fed speakers are "highly discouraged" (forbidden, basically) from making public speeches o...
Mon, Jan 23 2017, 6:55 PM
Mt. St. Helens was the most destructive volcano in US history. Mt. St. Yellen has almost nothing to do with it apart from the fact that the bond m...
Fri, Jan 20 2017, 9:24 AM
10yr yields hit 2.5112 overnight. That's close enough to the important 2.52% pivot point to suggest an expansion of what we consider the current rang...
Fri, Jan 20 2017, 5:28 PM
To be fair to today's presidential inauguration, it was never destined to be an exceptionally big market mover. Traders nonetheless had to prepare to...
Thu, Jan 19 2017, 8:34 AM
When it comes to defining the recent range, there are several candidates for the upper and lower boundaries. When 10yr yields were under 2.40%, that ...
Thu, Jan 19 2017, 5:22 PM
Pain continued for bond markets today as 10yr yields broke above the upper range boundaries that had been intact since the beginning of the year. Ad...
Wed, Jan 18 2017, 8:29 AM
Although yields were able to close at the lowest levels in more than a month yesterday, bonds continued to trade in the same intraday range (roughly...
Wed, Jan 18 2017, 5:20 PM
After flirting with a break of the lower end of 2017's sideways range yesterday, bond traders clearly decided " now's not the time. " There's preciou...
Tue, Jan 17 2017, 8:46 AM
January continues playing host to the same level of stock/bond correlation that we typically see at the end and beginning of any given year. Beyond c...
Tue, Jan 17 2017, 5:48 PM
In some regards, bonds had their best day of the year today. The outright gains weren't quite as big as Jan 5th or 9th, but closing yields were the...
Fri, Jan 13 2017, 8:26 AM
Bond markets are beginning the day slightly stronger ahead of the week's only significant economic data. The 8:30am time slot brings Retail Sales (...
Fri, Jan 13 2017, 4:54 PM
Granted, we might wake up next Tuesday (markets are closed Monday) to find that bonds are quickly breaking out of the recent range. But as for this...